) of the _Bergeries de
Juliette_, and I am not in the least surprised that no reader of them
should have worried any librarian into completing the set. Each of these
parts is a stout volume of some five hundred pages,[135] not very small,
of close small print, filled with stuff of the most deadly dulness. For
instance, Ollenix is desirous to illustrate the magnificence and the
danger of those professional persons of the other sex at Venice who have
filled no small place in literature from Coryat to Rousseau. So he tells
us, without a gleam or suspicion of humour, that one customer was so
astonied at the decorations of the bedroom, the bed, etc., that he
remained for two whole hours considering them, and forgetting to pay any
attention to the lady. It is satisfactory to know that she revenged
herself by raising the fee to an inordinate amount, and insisting on her
absurd client's lackey being sent to fetch it before the actual
conference took place. But the silliness of the story itself is a fair
sample of Montreux' wits, and these wits manage to make anything they
deal with duller by their way of telling it.

[Sidenote: Des Escuteaux and his _Amours Diverses_.]

It is still more unfortunate that our national collection has none of
the numerous fictions[136] of A(ntoine?) de Nerveze. His _Amours
Diverses_ (1606), in which he collected no less than seven love-stories,
published separately earlier, would be useful. But it luckily does
provide the similarly titled book of Des Escuteaux, who is perhaps the
most representative and prolific writer, next to Montreux and Nerveze,
of the whole, and who seems to me, from what I have read of the first
and what others say of the second, to be their superior. The collections
consist of (_Amours de_ in every case) _Filiris et Isolia_, dedicated to
Isabel (not "-bel_le_") de Rochechouart; _Clarimond et Antoinette_ (to
Lucresse [_sic_] de Bouille); _Clidamant et Marilinde_ (to _Jane_ de la
Brunetiere), and _Ipsilis et Alixee_ (to Renee de Cosse, Amirale de
France!).[137]

Some readers may be a little "put off" by a habit which Des Escuteaux
has, especially in the first story of the volume, of prefixing, as in
drama, the names of the speakers--_Le Prince_, _La Princesse_, etc.--to
the first paragraphs of the harangues and _histoires_ of which these
books so largely consist.[138] But it is not universal. The most
interesting of the four is, I think, _Clidamant et Marilinde_, for it
int